ECan Sacking A Coup For Corporate Irrigators

- John Minto

 

The April 2010 sacking of the Environment Canterbury (ECan) elected Councillors was an orchestrated coup conducted by the Government on behalf of corporate irrigators. From their overseas offices big agribusiness investors are piling on the pressure for more opportunities and better returns for their over-paid managers and impatient shareholders. They are happy for their profits to be extracted at the expense of family farming, the Canterbury environment and democracy itself. The social and environmental damage is irrelevant to people who have never sighted the Canterbury plains and who wouldn’t know a braided river from an irrigation canal.

The Government report prepared by former National Cabinet Minister Wyatt Creech said the Council was dysfunctional and riven with political squabbling but even if this report were 100% correct, and this is hotly disputed even by critics of ECan, abolishing the elected Councillors and replacing them with Commissioners was an outrageous abuse of democracy. If things were as bad as Environment Minister Nick Smith says then the Government should have told the people of Canterbury and appealed to them to use their votes to fix it at the local body elections. The subsequent public debate would have clarified the issues; candidates would have declared their positions and Canterbury voters left to make their decision through the ballot box. The newly elected Council would have been tasked with finding a way through the various competing interests for Canterbury’s water.

But the Government wasn’t interested in voters getting in the way of the irrigators. Papers released under the Official Information Act showed instead that it was working hard to find ways to overcome obstacles to the irrigators’ plans. Democracy was one of them. So it abolished the Council and installed Dame Margaret Bazley with a group of development-friendly Commissioners to help. No environmentalists need have applied. And just to make sure the irrigators get what they want, under section 31 of the new Act, Nick Smith can suspend the Resource Management Act (RMA) for water moratoria and water conservation orders (river protection measures). In this way the Government will be able to further restrict the rights of objectors to legally challenging ECan decisions which threaten the environment.

Government Wants To Change Face Of Canterbury Environment Forever

Dame Margaret Bazley’s job is to put in place a water plan for Canterbury which favours development over the environment and which will be impossible to legally wind back by Cantabrians by the time they get the chance to elect Councillors again in 2013. Aucklanders are facing a similar process with the development of the Supercity where the Government proposes to establish Council Controlled Organisations to run most Council services at arm’s length from elected Councillors. The undemocratic structure is developed before voters have a say.

Just to make absolutely sure we are in no doubt as to the Government’s intentions Finance Minister Bill English has said that the Government itself would provide the money for investment in damming Canterbury rivers for irrigation if the private sector couldn’t by itself guarantee enough profit for investors. The Government was strongly advised not to take the dramatic action it did. Ministry of Justice officials said the Creech-led review of the Council did not justify bringing in Commissioners and restricting any appeals on a regional plan and water conservation orders to points of law in the High Court.

Looked at more widely, whenever a Government wants to make significant policy change it often does so by creating a crisis. National did this with claims about ACC before announcing big increases in levies as a way to make it more lucrative for private sector involvement. In the ECan case the “crisis” was created by commissioning a report on the workings of the Council. Who better to do so than former National government Minister and dairy industry heavyweight Wyatt Creech? It was like asking a weasel to check on kiwi eggs.

Creech quickly prepared a report which gave the Government ammunition to declare a crisis and abolish the Council. And it won’t be just the voters who can expect to be shafted through this decision. Don’t be surprised to hear moves to contract out ECan work to the private sector. Neo-liberals claim contracting out is more efficient but any so-called efficiencies are gained by reducing pay and conditions of employment. A more insidious impact of the decision will be its chilling effect on democracy elsewhere in the country. Other elected councils will know they could suffer the same fate if they stand in the way of development. In the meantime it’s reassuring to see Canterbury residents angry about the decision. Turning opposition into effective action is the next step.

This was published in the Press as one of John’s weekly columns on 27/4/10. Sadly it was to be one of his last. As of June 2010 John was fired and replaced as a columnist, after 4 ½ years. It always seemed too good to be true, particularly as the Press was the only mainstream media outlet to offer John a column (his hometown paper, the New Zealand Herald, certainly never has). I take this opportunity, on behalf of hundreds of thousands of grateful readers, to thank him for a truly wonderful body of work as a weekly columnist since 2006. The transnational Fairfax media empire still publishes John but only in cyberspace. You can read his regular blog at http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/blogs/frontline. Ed.


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